Alt-Landenberg Castle (Ruin)

Alt-Landenberg Castle is a castle ruin in the area of the present-day municipality of Bauma in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. It is located on a hill above the Töss at an approximate height.

Access from the mountain side was made difficult by an artificially deepened neck ditch. The current access is from the south. After a first gate, one entered a Zwinger (outer bailey) and, via a drawbridge to a second gate, reached a staircase carved into the rock, which led directly into the complex.

The complex consists of a roughly 25-meter-long western part and a slightly longer and wider eastern part, where the residential buildings stood. Construction took place in several phases. An older complex, presumably with shingle-roofed wooden houses, was expanded around 1200; the curtain wall also originated around this time. The old access in the north was replaced by a gate system in the southwest. A striking amount of tuff stone was used as building material. The spacious palas, which occupied the entire eastern part, was built in a later expansion phase. On the mountain side, it was protected by a three-meter-thick shield wall, parts of which are still preserved. The column bases that supported the first upper floor are still visible. The transverse wall in the west and the 14-meter-deep well were added later. It is conceivable that this narrow part formed a staircase. Traces of a keep were not found.

The Alt-Landenberg complex with its curtain wall, gatehouse, Zwinger, inner courtyard, spacious palas, and utility buildings corresponded to a typical castle of the late High Middle Ages. The castle complex was excavated and restored in the 1960s.

The castle was built around 1200 as a typical clearing castle. Its beginnings and first inhabitants are not documented. However, in 1315, the last knights of the castle already fell in the Battle of Morgarten, when they suffered a devastating defeat on the side of the Habsburgs. The Abbey of St. Gallen received Alt-Landenberg back as a hereditary fief. The castle repeatedly changed owners. Hans Rüegg von Altlandenberg was mentioned as the last owner in 1651. At this time, stones from the increasingly dilapidated castle were used as building material for a church.